by David Capel
First published in the UK in 2012
This edition published in the UK in 2012
© David Capel Ltd
Distributed by Instinctive Product Development Ltd
The right of David Capel to be identified as Author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-908816-53-5
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Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
WB Yeats ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ IV
Editor’s Note
The Journal of John Lascaris was discovered in a Greek Orthodox monastery in Southern Italy late last century. It is an apparently authentic account, dating from the early 1100’s, of a Byzantine aristocrat’s journey through parts of Western Asia some fifty years previously.
This modern translation attempts to recreate the stated purpose of the original – to provide an accessible description of events in the relatively informal style of the time.
It is worth remembering that for Byzantines like Lascaris, the world and its affairs revolved around their Empire and its magnificent capital, Constantinople (which they simply called ‘The City’). They referred to themselves as ‘the Romans’, and indeed they were the heirs to the legacy of Julius Caesar, though Italy and the West had fallen centuries before.
By now they spoke Greek, the language of the East, and the names they gave to the things that made up their world – their buildings, officials, military ranks and the people beyond their borders – were an eclectic mix of old and new, Latin and Greek, Christian and pagan.
They lived a double life. On the one hand their rituals were steeped in oriental mysticism, dominated by an intolerant Church. At the same time they upheld and preserved the literature and pagan wisdom of Plato, Socrates and Virgil.
Those who had seized their provinces in the West long ago they still regarded as barbarians, and barely recognised the growing distinctions and sophistication of France, Germany or England. These people were collectively known as ‘Franks’ after one of the tribes that had first invaded the Roman Empire half a millennium before. For their part, Western Europeans ignored the Imperial claims of Constantinople, and insultingly referred to the Emperor as the ‘King of the Greeks’. They thought of the Byzantines as decadent, rich and effete.
In the East lay the source of Byzantium’s greatest fear and loathing. The mighty Arab Caliphate had robbed them of their best provinces in Syria and Egypt, and threatened them with the ghastly abomination of Islam.
A period of expansion under the fearsome Emperor Basil II has left Byzantium with a false sense of security. His decadent successors have plundered the treasury and allowed the army to go soft, particularly the militia of the provincial themes. New foes, the Turks and Normans, lurk on the borders east and west, waiting for their chance.
Προλογος
Never trust a Venetian. This one was dark and scratched the back of his head with an innocent smile playing on his lips. He looked round and, politely, held out his cup for more wine before waving at one of the passing party-goers as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
But when his sharp blue eyes glanced in my direction, I saw that there was no humour in them at all. I could sense, then, that there was something wrong but I couldn’t see it; the drink had hold of me and so I was reckless.
He was a visitor, recently come to the City, but had clearly already used his oily charm to worm his way into this gathering. He chatted gaily to Maria Alania, our hostess, making her laugh. Meanwhile, her husband, Michael Ducas, sat in the corner, oblivious, talking theology with Psellos and a couple of his priggish students.
It was another of those wanton parties that Maria threw: there was a mixture of the great and the good, old and young, a few of her Georgian friends and a smattering of random passers-by.
I saw how she had laughed into his eyes and brushed her lovely jewelled fingers on his cloak. Then, seeing my gaze, she had said,
“Come, Amando (or some such effeminate name), come and talk to my dear friend John. Do look after him for me, he gets so lost at these parties and can never think of anything to say!”
I blushed in annoyance and embarrassment, mumbling something about having been lost but here was found, but she had already turned away and was drifting to another group of guests.
“So, John, what do you do?” The Italian voice was soft at my elbow.
“Do? What do you mean, what do I do?”
“I am a merchant,” he smiled unpleasantly. “I assume you have a role in government here, or in commerce? Judging by your clothes, perhaps a trader in Asian goods, no?”
He was being deliberately insulting. “Of course I’m not a trader. I’m a…a landowner. A farmer,” I stumbled.
He raised his eyebrows. “A farmer, really? And where is your farm?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know it,” I said impatiently. “Anyway, I must…”
“I hope it is not out east,” he said. “I hear there is trouble on your Eastern borders. But do you play Tabula?”
“Yes, why?” I asked, while stealing a glance over his shoulder at Maria, who was flirting with a group of men, one of whom was my namesake, John Italos. She touched the elbow of a man I didn’t recognise, and held his hand briefly. He was richly dressed with short cropped grey hair and a military bearing. He could have been her father.
“I have learnt it during my stay here. Shall we play?”
“What, now?”
I wrenched my eyes away from the scene across the room and turned my attention back to the Italian. He seemed guileless. These provincial merchants turned up in the City, wide eyed at the luxuries and entertainments on offer, flush with gold after their sales and were wont to spend it.
I could have done with some cash and it seemed to me that the profits of this unscrupulous looking trader would be better lodged in my wallet than some damp warehouse in Venice. And he was obviously a beginner.
I should have been suspicious, of course; it wasn’t normal to play tabula at a party like that one. Not that anyone minded. In fact, we had some welcome spectators at the beginning, including a beauty called Anna Sclerus, who put her hand on my shoulder and murmured, “now John, don’t be too hard on our guest.” A couple of the others laughed and one baa-ed like a sheep. It was clear that a rake like me had found his lamb to fleece for the night.
But there was something odd in the way that the Venetian clicked his fingers and whispered to a servant. In a trice, the servant reappeared with a board and two large goblets of wine. He set us up at a side table and soon we were engrossed in the game. It is simple enough in concept and something like it is played from Mecca to Massilia. It involves moving you
r glass counters in a different direction from your opponent, according to the throw of the dice. The idea is to leave each bead protected by another, lest he is pounced upon by the enemy and has to start his course again.
The game is partly luck but is mainly a question of judging the odds and so is well-suited to gambling. I’d won more than my fair share of games against the young City bucks of my acquaintance and fancied myself as quite a player.
I held my own in the early rounds, to the murmured applause of our audience. I noticed the grey haired man had joined the crowd, though he watched the game unsmilingly. The Venetian kept cursing my luck, which is the sure sign of an amateur and just annoyed me more. I should have stopped then, but everyone enjoys winning and I wanted to put him down.
The drink started to take hold and, in a strange way, my mind became like a tunnel, focussed on the board, with my surroundings in a misty haze. I was dimly aware that the hubbub around us subsided and then, suddenly, the play lurched dramatically in his favour. At the crucial point, when it seemed the game had turned once more, I doubled the stake and he immediately doubled back.
He waited for a moment and then said, “Are you good for this?”
Until then I had placed my coin upon the table and so he must have noticed me scraping inside my wallet for the last pieces of small change. There was not nearly enough to cover the bet. I forced a grin through his effrontery and told him loftily I would make sure he would see his winnings – if he won.
“It’s just that I sail for Bari four days from now.”
“Don’t worry. Throw.”
“Look for me in Galata,” he replied and then he rolled. I can still see the dice – a five and a three. The dots on the second die were slightly out of line, with the furthest nearly rubbed away. An eight was the only throw that could save him; any other and I was sure to claw back much of my losses.
“Grazie,” he said softly, scooped up my remaining coin with a deft flick, and stalked away.
I stared at my hands resting on the table. I was surprised how still they were. It is amazing how, in a moment of crisis, the most trivial thoughts can invade your head. I did not look up at first, because I was too embarrassed to meet anyone’s eye, but then I glanced around me. I could not see a soul at first. I looked around the room and there was nobody apart from a couple of Slavic servants quietly cleaning up. It was late. I asked one of them the time and he said, in a thick accent, that is was approaching the first hour. I wondered dimly where everyone was and staggered to my feet, clutching the chair.
I walked unsteadily to the doors that led into the main house.
“Please sir, the house is closed, it is time to go home,” said one of the Slavs, half blocking my path. I pushed past him and stumbled through the arras masking the archway that led into the vestibule. There was a marble staircase that curled up to a reception floor above and I could hear the faint sound of chatter. A distinctive male voice burst out in laughter.
I made to ascend, but a guard appeared from the shadows to my left and put his hand on my shoulder. I span round and tried to push him away, stumbling again.
“I’m going up to see Maria,” I slurred.
“Sir, the Empress must not be disturbed.”
“Empress, my arse. She’s no more an empress than you are a soldier. Anyway, I’m a friend of hers. Out of my way.”
She was an empress, in truth, albeit a nominal one. Her husband, Michael, was titular co-Emperor to the incumbent, Romanus Diogenes, though he was thought too useless to have a practical hand in government. He was left to his studies and she to her carousing, which, by the sound of things, was clearly still going on. I tried to push past the guard but he was built like a boulder and heaved me back so that I stumbled against an occasional table, rattling the bronze oddments upon it.
We must have been louder than I thought because at that moment Maria appeared on the landing above and leant over to see what the fuss was about. She looked stunning, with her long black hair undone and flowing like silk over a loose midnight-blue robe. More beautiful, she seemed to me, than when she was dressed in all her finery earlier that evening. There was no doubt that she was an empress in looks and my heart skipped a beat as I moved into the light so that she could see me. A frown creased her perfect brow and her dark eyes flashed in the gloom.
“What is it? what’s the matter?” she hissed.
“It’s me, John Lascaris,” I said, starting towards her, but the guard again blocked my way.
“Get this fellow to let me pass, Maria, I want to come up.”
“John, the party’s over. You look tired and it’s time to go home now.”
“I can’t go back now. It’s too late. I’ll wake up the house. Mother will kill me.”
“Well go and stay in a tavern.”
“I can’t. I haven’t got any money.”
I heard a fit of suppressed giggles from the doorway behind her.
“Who’s that?”
“No-one. Nobody,” she tutted impatiently. “Look, there’s a room downstairs. Boris will show you. You can sleep it off there. But as soon as it’s light you must go. I don’t want to see you in the morning. At least not until you’re sober. Goodnight.”
And with that she turned on her heel and went back into the chamber behind her.
“This way,” said the burly guard and he took me firmly by the elbow and led me down a corridor into the gloom. There was a small cloakroom off to one side that was furnished with a low couch under a trellised window, which must have looked into the internal courtyard.
There were no blankets or cushions but I flopped down and fell asleep almost instantly, the room still spinning around me. My last memory was of the soft notes of a viol playing a slow, night time song from on high.
α
It was a fine mid-May morning and the streets were just coming alive as I left the secluded tree-lined avenue where Michael and Maria had their town house. I turned left onto the Mese, the great avenue that ran the length of the City from the Golden Gate to the Church of Holy Wisdom. I was nearing the Forum of Theodosius and already the vendors with their carts and small brazier fires, dragged up from the alleys on either side, lined the avenue, selling nuts, dried fruit and other snacks. Beggars from Bulgaria and the other Slavic lands had crawled out of their night time hiding places and squatted between them.
A voice called out to me in good Greek. I looked round in surprise and saw a young, healthy-looking man dressed in rags, squatting amongst the filth and holding out his hand. He had a familiar accent and, after a moment, I placed it – it was the voice of Koloneia, the district where our estate was situated.
I walked through the triumphal arch into the Forum and crossed it to the southern side, stepping through the long shadow of the column at its centre.
The narrow streets plunged down towards the Marmora shore where there were bakeries and fish shops selling freshly grilled mackerel from the boats in the Harbour of Julian below. There is nothing more irresistible than the smell of newly baked bread to a man suffering from the excesses of the night before, so I stopped at a small shop and, without thinking, ordered a salty koulouria. When the baker handed it to me I groped for my purse and felt the lightness of its leather as I pulled it out. There wasn’t a nummus in there.
I mumbled an apology as I handed back the bread and walked on, my stomach growling in protest. My mood, lifted by the fine morning and the buzzing life around me, descended once more in to a gloom edged with unease. I had spent my month’s allowance in a week.
Our house was not far from the Boukoleon Palace in an area that was no longer fashionable, but still respectable enough. I knocked gently at the iron studded door, and it opened almost instantly.
“Good morning, master,” said Demetrius, one of our two footmen, a lithe Greek man of about forty years who had been with the household since his teens.
“Is my mother awake?”
“Yes, sir, she is taking her breakfast. Will you join
her?”
“No. Bring some bread, oil and water to my room, would you?”
My own apartment was up a short flight of stairs leading from the inner courtyard, meaning I could come and go as I pleased, disturbing only the doorman. It dawned on me as I kicked off my boots that Demetrius must have been anticipating my arrival. When he came a few minutes later with a tray I thanked him and told him I was not to be disturbed for two hours.
I wolfed down the food and threw myself on the bed, but sleep was denied me. My head started to pound again and my thoughts gnawed away at the folly of the previous evening. Eventually I gave up and rose to wash as best I could in the basin set there and donned some fresh clothes.
I decided to go and see my mother and try to secure some more cash from her. She would have heard of my morning arrival and I felt like getting this uncomfortable business out of the way. Besides, I had been invited on a boat trip later in the week to the Princes Isles, and I would need a couple of solidi at least (debased as they were) for the expedition, and to keep me in the meantime.
I sometimes worried that she thought me unduly profligate with both money and time spent on entertainment. But she seldom showed it. Life in the City was pretty fast, and my behaviour was not exceptional. If you were (relatively) well off, and of good social standing, then what was there to do but flit from party, to luncheon, and from the hippodrome to the gambling den? Many of us affected to study, some more seriously than others, but in many ways the classes run by Michael Psellos and his acolytes were part of the social scene.
I had joined various courses to begin with, at the urging of my father, who had left some money specifically for my education. So I had learnt my fair share of Latin and was familiar with the legal codes and classic texts of rhetoric and history. The university scene was to some extent serious, but in large part (at least for students like me) in keeping with the trend for a kind of louche Hellenism that pervaded the times.
With our drinking parties, philosophical arguments and even the clothes we wore, we imitated our forebears from the early days of the Caesars. So long as you did not openly insult the various religious rituals which peppered the calendar, the authorities did not much mind what you did.
